They all sorta snuck up on me this month. These three career milestones. Little things, really. But, really, big deals to me:

No. 1: On Tuesday, October 6, I hit my 3-month anniversary at Yahoo!

Sure, it’s not a 10-year anniversary, which merits an inscribed espresso machine. Or a 5-year celebration, which the company applauds with a gumball machine. Heck, it’s not even one measly year, a milestone that I doubt the company officially recognizes.

But I note the 3-month mark because my first full-time job out of college was at a newspaper that put all new hires on probation for their first three months. (That’s pretty standard at unionized papers, although some probation periods in bigger newsrooms last six months.) During probation, the newspaper can let you go for any reason (which I realize is a daily reality at most other jobs under at-will employment laws). Veteran journalists in many newsrooms told me almost everyone passes probation, but I still liked to celebrate with my coworkers by bringing in a homemade cake.

Okay, maybe I just liked an excuse to indulge my sweet tooth.

Sadly, I completely forgot about my 3-month anniversary this time. Two days prior, I wound up with an ambitious project…

No. 2: On Tuesday, October 13, I hit my 100th day since joining Yahoo!

Journalists often write stories assessing what corporate or political leaders have accomplished during their first 100 days in office. I might write a blog post about what I learned during my first 100 days as a global brand marketing manager … or not, because that would take forever as it seems like I learned something every minute at work. This job even expanded my vocabulary to include phrases and concepts like “brand house,” “socialize (an idea),” “rev to reflect,” “storytelling springboard,” and “smile meter.”

I should have kept a running list. But I was busy. Two days prior, I was informed that the project I had been working on for a week that was due in a week had been attempted by another department as a year-end project, but “the number of people who would have been needed to identify the sources for that data was so vast” that the year-end project went nowhere. I panicked for 30 seconds. Then I tried to work even smarter and faster.

No. 3: On Wednesday, October 20, my boss told me that the project I delivered “created a new standard of excellence.” My VP agreed. And my SVP shared it with the CEO’s staff.

Now that’s a milestone worth celebrating. So I indulged in a cupcake.